This is a CU Colorado Springs student blog for the following courses: Intermediate Microeconomics and Austrian Economics.

March 31, 2013

College Tuition (Inflation)

As a college student I believe that college tuition and
costs are too high. On Forbes website I found an article that talk about
college costs being out of control. A few things mentioned in the article were
the comparison between College Tuition & Fees Vs. Overall Inflation is
498.98 % to 114.85. Also, that state colleges and universities in the past have
controlled prices somewhat by throwing more tax dollars at institutions and
through private funding. But lately the trend has reversed, the costs are
continuing to rise and with less effort to control these costs. There needs to
be fiscal accountability for these institutions of higher learning.

The fact is Inflation is why too high for college tuition
and isn’t even close to what the overall inflation rate is. Inflation is taxation
without representation. So as college students and citizens in the United
States we should not allow this extra tax to be associated with our college
degrees. Obviously, we need to hold our government more accountable for keeping
the purchasing power of the monetary unit as high as possible. We need a government that isn’t worried about the
way they necessarily spend the money they have, but how the money they have is
obtained. With inflation and the loss of monetary purchasing power, prices do
not change to the same extent. This is what examples the different relationship
between college tuition inflation and the overall inflation. Because there will
always be prices rising more rapidly than others or falling more rapidly. Why is inflation so high though? One of
the main reasons could be because the government is giving out loans, grants,
and money to students and colleges that was printed or aka inflation money. Another
reason could be that there are subsidies involved, and so many regulations within
the government related to these colleges.

The answer to this problem to getting rid of this hidden tax
is to have a government that is doing everything it can to keep the purchasing
monetary power as high as possible. The way to do this is eliminate as many
manipulated unions, and government policies to leave the market unhampered.
Make relative price more important and not the price level and you will see
inflation not continue to grow as it is.